10 Millionaire Habits to Start Making Serious Money Soon and Build Wealth in a Hurry

1. Always add value.

Value makes the world go round. Everyone wants to get value out of an exchange. The most successful entrepreneurs in the world know that if you're going to make lots of money, then you need to always be adding value. Always seek to add more value to whatever services, information or products you're selling.

Related: Cutting Your Price Has No End But Adding Value Has No Limits

2. Wake up early.

The early morning hours are replete with quiet solitude. It's when you can refine your thoughts and implement your plans before all the distractions of the day. If you are constantly dealing with interruptions throughout your day, find your happy place in the morning. Wake up early so you can plan whatever will advance you toward your goals.

Related: The Power of Mornings: Why Successful Entrepreneurs Get up Early

3. Exercise

Making money isn't just about implementing good career or business habits. You need to be fit emotionally and physically to fire on all pistons. Exercise in the morning, even if briefly. Exercising gets the blood flowing and oxygenation to the cells, helping you to think clearly and be laser-focused. This habit is implemented by some of the world's richest entrepreneurs.

Related: Exercise Is One Thing Most Successful People Do Everyday

4. Daily goal setting.

You have your long-term goals in place but, if you're looking to make serious money and quickly, you have to set goals every single day. These are milestones on your way to your biggest and most outlandish goals. Do this when you wake up, first thing in the morning, so that you stay on track and on target. Decide what will move you closer to those financial goals by the end of the day, then go out there and do it.

Related: Is Goal Setting Missing From Your Daily Routine? (Infographic)

5. Effective time management

Everyone in this world has the same amount of time. The 24 hours of each day is life's greatest equalizer. It doesn't matter what we do, where we're from or how much money we have, we all have the same amount of time.

Effective time management is a must for those looking to get ahead. Whether your goal is to earn a lot of money over time or you just need to earn a little bit of extra cash quickly, properly managing your finite time is what makes it possible to succeed.

Related: 20 Quick Tips for Better Time Management

6. Networking

Networking is one of the most important habits to have in life. The sayings go, your network is your net worth, and if you lie down with dogs, you'll definitely come up with fleas. Reach out to others and find out what you can do to add value to their world. Don't ask for anything in return, especially not right away. Just insert yourself into the mix, and eventually the opportunities will find you.

Related: 3 Quick Tricks to Networking for People Who Hate Networking

7. Innercising 

John Assaraf, who built up a billion-dollar real estate business and is featured in the movie The Secret, preaches the importance of "innercising" in his NeuroGym system. Innercising is mental exercise to reprogram subliminal conditioning deeply embedded in our subconscious. The goal is to frame the mind with a positive financial outlook which attracts money and opportunities to our lives, rather than pushing them away.

Related: Change Your Mindset for Greater Opportunities

8. Healthy diet

Will eating healthier help you to attract more wealth or make more money in the interim? You can bet it will. Sound body, sound mind. To have the precision thinking and focus of a highly-trained athlete, you need to eat healthily. Our bodies spend a large amount of their energy on processing foods. Unhealthy eating leaves us with less energy for achieving our goals, whatever they are.

Related: 12 Ways to Eat Healthy No Matter How Busy You Are

9. Saving and investing.

Obviously, saving and investing is fundamental to building wealth. It won't happen as fast as you'd like, but the larger component at play is having moment-of-the-opportunity cash to invest when something requires your attention immediately. When you have capital and are no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck, you're ready to earn more money when the opportunity presents.

Related: Why Entrepreneurs Need To Save And Invest Money

10. Mindfulness

If you play a cutthroat game and walk all over people, few opportunities will come your way. Being mindful and respectful of others attracts opportunities that you can eventually convert into cash. Be mindful about how you act and what you say so it doesn't come back to bite you in the butt.

Related: 6 Ways Embracing Mindfulness Helps You Thrive at Work

5 Ways to Improve Your Entrepreneurial Creativity

Entrepreneurs have to be a bottomless pit of creativity, don’t they? Not only do we have to dream up big ideas, we also have to innovate new ways of executing them. And the sheer number of hours it takes to build a successful business can also lead to creative burnout, which is, of course, counterintuitive.

“Creativity is a process that you can’t force,” says Molly Reynolds, cofounder and host of The Unicorn in the Room. “You have to know it’s a process and respect that process. But there are certainly some ways to set yourself up for success.”

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Reynolds was a professional musical theatre actor and continues to study dance and fine art in her spare time. Her love of the creative process spurred the creation of The Unicorn in the Room, an online resource for entrepreneurs.

Related: You Can Boost Your Creativity by Imagining You're Someone Else

Having interviewed business icons, such as Arianna Huffington and John Paul Dejoria, as well as top executives from GE, PwC, Forbes, Chobani and Heineken, Reynolds has identified these key ways to top business minds stay creative. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Buy an alarm clock.

Rest is a crucial part of the creative process and as Arianna Huffington will tell you, keeping your cell phone next to your bed while you sleep is a bad thing. According to a study by Pew Research Center, 44 percentof cellphone owners keep their favorite handheld next to them as they sleep to make sure they don’t miss an important call. But this is an extremely unhealthy habit to get into.

“So many people tell me they’ve got creative burnout, and almost all of them check their emails before they go to bed, first thing when they wake up, and yes, even in the middle of the night,” says Reynolds. “I used to do it too and the longer term effects are never good.”

Cellphones, TVs, tablets and other gadgets with LED screens all emit blue light that can inhibit our production of the sleep-inducing hormone, melatonin. The blue light can also trick our bodies into thinking that it’s daylight and interfere with our sleep cycles. Worse than that? An overheating cellphone in your bed could even set your pillow on fire!

People will use the excuse that they need their phone as an alarm clock. Newsflash: you can buy an alarm clock that is not a smartphone. Avoid bouts of insomnia and house fires by keeping your cell phone out of your bedroom.

2. Get a variety of perspectives.

Do you know why The Challenger mission failed? Lack of diverse thinking. While many reports have placed the blame on technical fault and cold weather, others suggest that the disaster could have been avoided. The engineering team was used to receiving orders from the top down. Despite being aware of the potential dangers, they went ahead and cleared the spacecraft for launch. The management team at NASA simply would not allow room for different perspectives or opinions.

GE is a company that is more than 100 years old, and the executives there are still learning so that they can continue innovating. In fact, they hold leadership summits, where they invite in a wide variety of companies and share their best practices. With a culture of constant learning, GE wanted to see what they could learn from Silicon Valley culture. So, they partnered with author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, to see how they could build innovation and fast work into their company core. Being open to change and new ideas is essential for companies to remain competitive and creative in shifting environments.

Related: 4 Ways Creativity Is Killing Your Viable Business Ideas

3. Travel.

There’s nothing like taking a timeout to get your creative juices flowing. Travel broadens the mind and exposes you to new and unfamiliar situations. You get to sample local cuisine,find out about different cultures and maybe even learn a language. All these experiences translate into enhanced problem solving skills and the ability to think creatively on your feet. 

You might think that taking a sabbatical year to study Spanish in Barcelona or backpack around Southeast Asia is just an excuse for a time off. But there can be surprising benefits from taking yourself outside of your situation. It might even become the catalyst for new success. Winston Chen decided to invent an app, just to have some fun while he was traveling. It turned out to be the start of his new career and company, voice-based mobile app, Voice Dream.

4. Step away from the desk.

“Getting a Fitbit actually made me a better problem solver,” Reynolds says. “Before, I’d sit at my desk for hours trying to figure something out, but the thing buzzes me and makes me take a break to walk. Inevitably, as I’m walking, I figure out the problem more quickly.”

Do you know one of the least inspirational places for people to come up with creative solutions? The meeting room! That’s because we often need to get up and mobilize our bodies to get unblock our creativity. Steve Jobs was well known for his walking meetings, and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly likes to meet standing up as well.

There’s actually some science to back this up. Researchers at Stanford revealed that bursts of walking, whether indoors or outdoors, can help to boost our creative inspiration. So, when you come up against a case of writer’s block, or you simply feel like you’re staring into an abyss instead of your computer screen, get up and get moving!

5. Draw your strategy.

That’s right, draw your strategy. Don’t write it. This will cause your mind to think differently, which is a great way to shake up creativity. Expert on visual thinking, Dan Roam, worked as a consultant for some of the world’s largest companies, including Google, Sun Microsystems and eBay. He believes that one of the best ways to help people solve problems and contribute new ideas is by drawing them out. In an interview with Business Insider, he said “taking advantage of our innate ability to see -- both with our eyes and with our mind’s eye -- in order to discover ideas that are otherwise invisible, develop those ideas quickly and intuitively, and then share those ideas with other people in a way they simply ‘get.’”

Get vulnerable.

Lastly, says Reynolds, if you’re really committed to improving your creative mind in every one of these five steps, you need to allow yourself to get vulnerable. “Take a class that you would never think of taking, charcoal drawing, samurai sword fighting, tap dancing, whatever! You might feel ridiculous at first, and that’s a good thing. Having that vulnerability will remind you that you don’t have all of the answers and need to be open.”

Related: 5 Things I Did Before I Completely Burned Out

According to David Brendel, of the Harvard Business Review, vulnerability can actually make you stronger. Things like apologizing for errors, admitting when you’re wrong, or seeking help from others can all make you a better leader. When you allow yourself to be in a position where you’re learning something new, you leave yourself vulnerable to criticism and failure. Yet this learning process is all part of improving your creative mind and ongoing education.

So, watch your sleeping habits, and make sure you take breaks from your desk to leave room for inspiration to come through. Be open to travel, culture and new ideas, as well as using visual thinking. Do all that with a dose of vulnerability and an enquiring mind, and you’ll give yourself the innovation makeover you desperately seek.

How the First 20 Minutes of Your Day Can Set You Up for Success

You all know about that morning-routine thing: Everyone raves that waking up early and sticking to your routine will help you get more done. But whether you get out of bed at 5 a.m. or 3 p.m., it's the first 20 minutes of your day that can set you up for success. 

The brain produces electrical patterns, often referred to as waves. Scientists have found a correlation between the frequency of brain waves and the body's state. When you first awake, your brain operates at around 10.5 waves per second. The range from eight to 13 Hz, or cycles per second, is the alpha stage. It's been called the gateway to the subconscious mind. 

Have you ever gone into a semi-daydreaming state while commuting? A few minutes pass, but you don't remember what happened. It's likely your brain entered the alpha state.

Without getting too deep into the science of brain activity, it's safe to say your subconscious mind is most active right when you wake up. You can train your brain to use this subconscious activity to think positively and accomplish more throughout your day. This quick checklist outlines six simple things you can do to make the most of these first 20 minutes. 

1. Don't click the snooze button.

Don't ever click your alarm's snooze button. This tells your brain it's OK to procrastinate by putting your day on hold.

2. Do make your bed.

Your room will look cleaner and feel more organized -- both of which train your mind to want to get things done, right away. It's a small win, but you can build on it as your day continues. 

3. Visualize your life.

This is probably the best thing you can do in the alpha state. Visualize your life. What will it be in five years, when you've achieved your goal of building your business? How about your relationships? Concentrate on how they'll look in the future and what you need to make them real. Tap into your subconscious mind to request what you want and then make your brain drive your actions.

Related: Billionaire Richard Branson Credits To-Do Lists as a Key to His Success

4. Watch a motivational video.

When you're up, not even a tough day can get you down. If you're truly motivated, you know you'll reach your milestones -- no matter what.

Big achievements are never easy. During the past year, I've found inspiration in quick-hit videos that help me refocus when I start to burn out between work and my studies. After you complete your visualization exercise, watch a video that reinforces the connection between intention and action steps.

5. Repeat your affirmations.

Simple affirmations such as "I will make this day the best day in my life" can have a huge impact on your life. It worked for Steve Jobs. First, compile a list of affirmations that fit your beliefs and core values. Repeat them aloud every morning.

All you need to know before going for a job interview

Going into a job interview can be a stressful and intimidating experience. When you’re trying to present the best image possible to your new potential employer, you may be nervous about the impression you’re making. If you’re feeling stressed, it may prevent you from accurately explaining your passions, experience and interest in the job.

Communication is key during any interview, regardless of the position you’re interviewing for. If you want to get the job, you need to be able to effectively communicate why you’re the best fit for the position.

To help you communicate your skills more efficiently, here are a few tips you should follow during any job interview.

1. Make a strong first impression.

Your first impression may be the most important part of your entire interview. First impressions usually stick, meaning that if you don’t present the very best version of yourself right off the bat, you can struggle to regain credibility.

When you begin the interview, be sure to shake hands with your interviewer and introduce yourself. If there are other team members in the room, introduce yourself to them the same way. Stay confident, make eye contact and maintain a firm handshake.

2. Speak clearly and with confidence.

It’s normal to feel a bit nervous when you’re in an interview, but you don’t want those nerves to influence the way you speak. If you allow the nerves to influence the way you answer questions or respond to the interviewer, you can come across unsure of yourself or not answer to the best of your ability.

Avoid saying “um” or other filler words as much as possible. If you need time to think about the right answer, it’s OK to take a moment before you respond. Speak calmly and try to talk as naturally as possible.

3. Remember to smile.

When you’re being interviewed for a job, the hiring manager is looking for more than just your qualifications. They’re also evaluating whether or not you’ll make a good fit in the office. This means you’ll want to present yourself as a team player and enjoyable to be around.

Something as simple as smiling while you’re talking can be enough to seem more personable. Be friendly and warm, but still focused. If you come across too hard or rigid, the hiring manager may think you could be difficult to work with. Naturally smile while you’re responding to questions.

4. Use storytelling.

Sometimes, the best way to respond to a question is with a story. Stories can make your interview more interesting and give the hiring manager something to remember you by. With the right story, you can build a strong connection with your interviewer and create a more natural dialogue.

Before you head into the interview, try to think of a few stories that relate your expertise or experience with the job qualifications. Rehearse the events in your head so you don’t get tripped up when trying to tell them in the interview. Remember the key points you’d like to touch on to be sure you get the point across.

5. Ask your own questions.

During the interview process, most of the focus is on you. Because the hiring manager is looking to get to know you, it can feel like you’re in the hot seat. However, this one-sided conversation can make the flow seem unnatural and prevent you and your hiring manager from making a strong connection.

Feel free to ask your hiring manager some questions, as well. While the questions you ask may be very different from the questions they’re asking you, creating a two-way dialogue can make the interview process much easier. Think of some things you want to know about the company, what the hiring manager likes about the company and questions that pertain specifically to the position requirements.

6. Know your interviewer.

Each company may approach the hiring process a bit differently. At one interview, you may be talking with an HR representative. At another, you may be interviewed by someone in the department you’ll be working with. Each of these interviews may look different, and you’ll want to respond differently to keep the conversation going.

When you’re interviewing with an HR professional, they may not know much about the specific details of the job. Answering with technical details or corporate jargon can put up a wall between the two of you, making it difficult to connect. Save the more detailed responses for interviews with department heads or potential supervisors.

To communicate best in your next interview, you’ll need to plan properly. Take some time to consider what potential questions you may be asked and how you’d like to answer them. Rehearse your stories and research the individual you’ll be talking with. With the right preparation, you can stay confident throughout your entire interview.

Earn Money By Teaching What You Know

What if you were given the opportunity to get paid for sharing with other people information you already? 

Now, perhaps unlike at any other time in history, if you possess knowledge that other people would be willing to pay for, you can start making money, with little or no startup costs. 

Teaching online grants you the freedom to still work a day job yet generate side-hustle income. In fact, today, it’s a real possibility to even make just as much money while you're asleep as when you're awake, thanks to the power of the Internet. 

You have the opportunity to teach and share what you're most passionate about to large audiences. Would you like to share what you love and be paid for doing so? One vehicle for doing so is Udemy.com, which describes itself as an "online learning marketplace" with a mission "to help anyone learn anything."

"The world is changing so quickly and gotten more complex, especially because of technology that people need to constantly learn new things,” Udemy's CEO, Dennis Yang tells me in a recent interview.

“There’s been a cultural shift towards sharing and just like Netflix, people want to be able control their own media," Yang adds. "Because of mobile technology, people want access to learning when they want it and where they want it." 

A new instructor, he says "has the ability to impact many students’ lives and students have access to experts, right at their fingertips," he says.

Udemy CEO Dennis Yang

Image credit: Udemy

Related: Share What You Know and People Will Buy What You Sell

Before you cast your hat in the online teaching ring, do these three things first:  

1. Claim a topic.

What area do you find fascinating? In everyday conversation, what do you talk about the most? This could be an indication of what you could teach others.   

What questions are people always asking you to help them with? If individuals are always approaching you for advice, perhaps within that there's something you can teach. 

What genre of books do you tend to read? Answering this might point to a subject area you might teach. 

Related: Do the Side Hustle: 5 Better Ways to Earn Extra Cash

2. Solve a problem.

To teach what you already know -- or what you are willing to learn -- you require students. And to find them, you must know their needs and how to best serve them.

Asking questions is the best way to get to familiarize yourself with the needs of prospective students.

You might ask, for example, some of these questions: 

What are three areas in which you're having problems at work or in life?

What are three things you really want to accomplish this year?

What frustrates you the most about your job?

What have you done to try to improve your situation? What has worked the best (or the least)? 

3. Define an objective.

Remember, you want to deliver only high-quality information. To so, you must know your audience and cater to their needs. A good question to ask yourself is "Who are the people who will participate in my course and what will they be hoping to learn?" 

Focus on students at a specific skill level: beginners, intermediate or advanced learners. This will not only help you target the right audience but will also ensure that your course offers the type of information that your students are seeking.

Nick Walter, who made $60,000 in 30 days by promoting his Udemy.com class on Kickstarter.com, has shared with me details of his teaching experiences. He didn’t even have a regular job at the time. That just goes to show you the power of teaching what you know. 

How much extra money would you like to make next year?

Do you have that number in your head? Consider how easy it can be earn extra cash just by teaching what you already know.  

This year, I'm launching my ebook, 21 Ways To Achieve Wealth & Success Plus 21-Day Resource Book, that will be turned into a Udemy course later this year.

By the end of this year, you'll end up somewhere. Do you want to end up somewhere well-designed or undesigned.

The choice is yours.

9 Ideas to Make a Side Income While Growing Your Business

Being an entrepreneur is synonymous with being financially unstable at times. While you’re growing your company, it’s important to be focused. But what if you could get a side hustle that would help bring in a healthy secondary income to alleviate some of that financial stress? And, best case, what if this side hustle could also help you grow your core business?

The good news is that there are a lot of companies that create opportunities for entrepreneurs that don’t require full-time work and can become a great companion to the work you’re doing. Better yet, they take out the hassle of having to create a second company to supplement your income because they do the legwork and allow you to plug in your skills and time.

Here are nine examples of opportunities that might be the perfect side hustle for you as you continue to grow your company!

1. Invest in real estate.

There are a lot of methods for making money in real estate, many of which don’t require your full time effort. Josh Dorkin, CEO and founder of BiggerPockets says you should consider land lording, flipping houses or wholesaling. His company’s website will help you manage and understand all of the different state laws and regulations, as well as leverage the largest worldwide network of real estate investors who come to his site to ask questions and help one another.

Related: Create Side-Hustle Income by Teaching What You Already Know

He also recommends finding people in your area with skill sets and expertise that you don’t have, and to partner with them or use them as a place to park your investment cash. You can join BiggerPockets for free and he recommends reading its Ultimate Beginner’s Guide, a free eight-chapter book on real estate investing for novices.

2. Drive a taxi.

Most of us are familiar with Uber and Lyft, the companies that took limo and town car services and gave them riders in their down time, and then expanded into recruiting regular citizens to utilize their free time to become taxi drivers. Have you considered being one of them?

I’ll never forget one of my UberX rides where the driver told me that he uses his spare time to make money driving as well as to leverage the networking he can do with each of his passengers as he grows his new business -- genius!

"One of the greatest things about the Uber platform is that it offers economic opportunity for a variety of drivers -- full time, part time, teachers in summer, full-time students, military spouses, etc. -- in more than 260 cities around the world,” says Molly Spaeth, an Uber spokesperson.

So if you’re in one of the 260 cities, you could be making your car into a money-generating experience and a networking opportunity on wheels!

3. Host the next-gen of tupperware parties.

There are many companies that do at-home parties and trunk shows where you can utilize the company’s products, marketing and operations infrastructure to build a side income by plugging in your network.

One that has proven to be very successful isStella and Dot, where you become a jewelry consultant and host parties at friend's homes, local boutiques or events. Other popular brands include Rodan + Fields andPure Romance.

4. Outsource your skills.

Can you do graphic design, data mining, website development, video editing, software development or customer service? Then you can parlay those skills by signing up on sites such as TaskRabbit or ODesk and get hired by their members to do jobs in any of these areas. You can pick and choose how often you want to work and what jobs you take!

5. Be a temp.

Long gone are the days of temp agencies and scouring the Internet for part-time or short-term work. Enter Wonolo, which helps people “work now locally.”

“Wonolo is a company that allows anyone to work for a few hours or a day at real companies doing real work," says AJ Brustein, the company's co-founder. "Want to help an ecommerce company fulfilling orders when they are busy, help out at a conference taking tickets, or assist in data entry at a wealth management firm? You can get numerous career experiences around the flexibility of your own schedule.”

You can get alerted of jobs available in your area immediately via Wonolo's app. Sounds perfect for a busy entrepreneur!

Related: Do the Side Hustle: 5 Better Ways to Earn Extra Cash

6. Rent out your pad.

Are you traveling for a business meeting and leaving your home empty? Do you have a spare room or guest house? It’s time to put them to work and list them on Airbnb orVRBO and make money on your property when you’re not using it!

7. Rent out your car.

If you can get on board with renting out your home, you’ll certainly understand the model created by companies such asRelayRides and FlightCar, which allow you to rent out your personal vehicle to their users.

I recently used RelayRides during a trip in San Francisco and had a great experience that didn’t require me to find a rental car center, and the cost was right. I even was able to get acquainted with the car’s owner, to whom I offered to help find a job.

It's another way to make money and network when you’re not using your car (like when you're parked at the airport thanks to FlightCar)!

8. Don’t just buy on eBay, sell there.

You can simply sell your own items, or you can make it into a side business.

“I run an eBay franchise in which I teach people how to run a re-sale business on eBay," says Garrett Brustein. "I do one-on-one training to show them where to get their inventory and how to list and ship items the same way I do so they can emulate the process and take all of the guess work out of the business. They are then able to do this as a part-time job in their free time."

Just think -- you can unload the stuff you don't want and go shopping to resell items all in the name of making money!

9. Get paid to network.

I know this one from personal experience! After founding my first company, a credit card processing brokerage, I began to organize networking events in my city to help young professionals interact in an environment where they wouldn’t fear getting sold to or hit on. I quickly realized the events were not only helping those in attendance to make valuable connections, but that there was real money to be made, as well.

Over time, I packaged the operations ofNetwork Under 40 to enable entrepreneurs in other markets to bring the events to their cities. By becoming the epicenter of the network, it naturally parlays into building their full-time businesses as well as creates a healthy side income.

If you’re looking to make some money on the side and/or find channels through which you can build your primary business, it’s time to look into some of these options.